On my ender 3 I have to turn the knobs on the bottom for leveling.

I just picked up a Bambu Lab P1S and it doesn’t.

Fundamentally, what is different that allows the P1S and other printers to get away without it?

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    The Bambu will have some sort of auto bed leveling. The simplest method is a limit switch connected to a small plunger style probe mounted next to the nozzle.

    Whatever the specific method, the idea is something that lets the printer sample multiple points on the bed and use the Z axis dynamically to adjust for the small irregularities. If you don’t have that, even half a millimeter can ruin print quality, so the leveling screws are there to handle it manually from the bed side.

    • GingeyBook@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      I had the ender 3 S1 with a cr touch though, why the need for both in that case?

      • skilltheamps@feddit.deEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        That’s odd, I upgraded my ender 3 with bed leveling and removed the knobs to mount it fixed, because the damn knobs keep moving and then you have to redo the bed calibration. To be honest I can imagine one reason might be that a loosely mounted bed gives you more fault tolerance against the nozzle being too low. I put my bed on two parallel linear rollers for more rigidity, and combined with dual z screws the nozzle has no chance anymore to produce any sort of first layer when it is slightly too low. That made me realize just how much the stock ender 3 is flopping around, but also how this can give you mostly okayish results most of the time without having to deal with a ton of small tolerances.

  • EmilieEvans@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    BambuLab wants to be the Apple of 3D-printing. So they simplified and decided the factory bed level with auto bed leveling/compensation is good enough for the user.

    On high end printers there is just no need to level them. The factory does it and the bed won’t move at all due to the excellent mechanical designs.

    Everything else? They have it to level the corners of the bed and use automatic bed leveling/correction to get it perfect and adjust for build plate imperfections.

    There is one system that does level the bed but doesn’t need the knobs as each of the three mounting points is connected to an independent z-axis (kinematic bed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgkK7Fez8VU

      • EmilieEvans@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        There are some differences on how locked down their (bambulab & apple) ecosystem is:

        • BambuLab talked with the X1plus guys and made changes to allow it (apple would never allow a jailbreak)

        • BambuLab talked with BTT/BIQU regarding the Panda touch The conclusion isn’t as fortunate.

        • BambuLab collaborated with E3D.